Posted By: is not an effective campaign strategy? nm on 2008-10-14 In Reply to:Obama refuses to present an official - vault copy of his birth certificate...hmmmm
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Is it true that shortly after Hurrican Katrina, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was seen buying thousands of dollars worth of shoes in an upscale Manhattan shoe store; and that the Secretary was accosted by an angry customer for doing so?
Origins: The rumor about Dr. Condoleeza Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State, going on a shoe-shopping spree while on vacation in New York immediately after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast has appeared on some gossip sites and was reported by the New York Daily News:
Yesterday, Rice went shopping at Ferragamo on Fifth Ave. According to the Web site www.Gawker.com, the 50-year-old bought several thousand dollars' worth of shoes at the pricey leather-goods boutique.
A fellow shopper shouted, How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless! — presumably referring to Louisiana and Mississippi.
The woman expressing her First Amendment rights was promptly removed from the store. A Ferragamo store manager confirmed to us that Rice did shop there yesterday, but refused to answer questions about whether the protester was removed, and whether by his own security or the Secret Service.
We don't know how much truth there is to this rumor, but it has undoubtedly spread because it expresses a fiddling while Rome burns frustration many Americans have felt at the federal government's slow response in providing aid to victims of the disastrous damage and flooding in New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf Coast caused by Hurricane Katrina.
As many other readers have pointed out, although one might direct criticism towards government officials such as the President of the United States, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response for failing to coordinate adequate response to large-scale emergencies within the U.S., such efforts are largely outside the purview of the Secretary of State. Dr. Rice's primary duties are advising the President in the determination and execution of U.S. foreign policy, conducting negotiations with foreign representatives, and providing instructions to U.S. ministers and consuls abroad, little of which directly bears on coordinating disaster relief within the U.S.
The implication embedded with this rumor is that if Dr. Rice had only been shopping for sensible shoes (instead of expensive leather ones), that would have been acceptable — a point that indicates there's perhaps more political subtext to this piece, especially since the purported outraged comments came from a fellow shopper.
Last updated: 2 September 2005
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/katrina/politics/rice.asp
I don't love the gay way of life, but to each his own.
The Myth of Foreign Fighters
Report by US think tank says only '4 to 10' percent of insurgents are foreigners.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
The US and Iraqi governments have vastly overstated the number of foreign fighters in Iraq, and most of them don't come from Saudi Arabia, according to a new report from the Washington-based Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS). According to a piece in The Guardian, this means the US and Iraq feed the myth that foreign fighters are the backbone of the insurgency. While the foreign fighters may stoke the incurgency flames, they only comprise only about 4 to 10 percent of the estimated 30,000 insurgents.
The CSIS study also disputes media reports that Saudis comprise the largest group of foreign fighters. CSIS says Algerians are the largest group (20 percent), followed by Syrians (18 percent), Yemenis (17 percent), Sudanese (15 percent), Egyptians (13 percent), Saudis (12 percent) and those from other states (5 percent). CSIS gathered the information for its study from intelligence services in the Gulf region.
The CSIS report says: The vast majority of Saudi militants who have entered Iraq were not terrorist sympathisers before the war; and were radicalized almost exclusively by the coalition invasion.
The average age of the Saudis was 17-25 and they were generally middle-class with jobs, though they usually had connections with the most prominent conservative tribes. Most of the Saudi militants were motivated by revulsion at the idea of an Arab land being occupied by a non-Arab country. These feelings are intensified by the images of the occupation they see on television and the internet ... the catalyst most often cited [in interrogations] is Abu Ghraib, though images from Guantánamo Bay also feed into the pathology.
The report also gives credit to the Saudi government for spending nearly $1.2 billion over the past two years, and deploying 35,000 troops, in an effort to secure its border with Iraq. The major problem remains the border with Syria, which lacks the resources of the Saudis to create a similar barrier on its border.
The Associated Press reports that CSIS believes most of the insurgents are not Saddam Hussein loyalists but members of Sunni Arab Iraqi tribes. They do not want to see Mr. Hussein return to power, but they are wary of a Shiite-led government.
TheLos Angeles Times reports that a greater concern is that 'skills' foreign fighters are learning in Iraq are being exported to their home countries. This is a particular concern for Europe, since early this year US intelligence reported that Abu Musab Zarqawi, whose network is believed to extend far beyond Iraq, had dispatched teams of battle-hardened operatives to European capitals.
Iraq has become a superheated, real-world academy for lessons about weapons, urban combat and terrorist trade craft, said Thomas Sanderson of [CSIS].
Extremists in Iraq are exposed to international networks from around the world, said Sanderson, who has been briefed by German security agencies. They are returning with bomb-making skills, perhaps stolen explosives, vastly increased knowledge. If they are succeeding in a hostile environment, avoiding ... US Special Forces, then to go back to Europe, my God, it's kid's play.
Meanwhile, The Boston Globe reports that President Bush, in a speech Thursday that was clearly designed to dampen the potential impact of the antiwar rally this weekend in Washington, said his top military commanders in Iraq have told him that they are making progress against the insurgents and in establishing a politically viable state.
Newly trained Iraqi forces are taking the lead in many security operations, the president said, including a recent offensive in the insurgent stronghold of Tal Afar along the Syrian border – a key transit point for foreign fighters and supplies.
Iraqi forces are showing the vital difference they can make, Bush said. 'They are now in control of more parts of Iraq than at any time in the past two years. Significant areas of Baghdad and Mosul, once violent and volatile, are now more stable because Iraqi forces are helping to keep the peace.
The president's speech, however, was overshadowed by comments made Thursday by Saudi Arabia's foreign minister. Prince Saud al-Faisal said the US ignored warnings the Saudi government gave it about occupying Iraq. Prince al-Faisal also said he fears US policies in Iraq will lead to the country breaking up into Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite parts. He also said that Saudi Arabia is not ready to send an ambassador to Baghdad, because he would become a target for the insurgents. I doubt he would last a day, al-Faisal said.
Finally, The Guardian reports that ambitions for Iraq are being drastically scaled down in private by British and US officials. The main goal has now become avoiding the image of failure. The paper quotes sources in the British Foreign department as saying that hopes to turn Iraq into a model of democracy for the Middle East had been put aside. We will settle for leaving behind an Iraqi democracy that is creaking along, the source said.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0923/dailyUpdate.html
Yes. That the media liberal is a myth.sm
We have a state media and they speak for the corporations who pay them who are ______ (fill in the blank).
The so-called faces of the liberal media:
The Beltway Boys: Your daily dose of liberalism out of Washington, DC.
Sean Hannity: A progressive Christian who likes to speak his mind.
Chris Matthews: A Clinton apologist.
Robert Novak: Champion of the poor and spokesman for social justice.
Tony Snow: Cutting through the GOP spin.
Paul Zahn: On the edge of progressive journalism.
John Stossel: Holding corporations accountable for greed and exploitation and pollution.
Bill O'Reilly: Notorious left-wing muckracker.
Brit Hume: Always fair and balanced.
Rush Limbaugh: The Master of Extreme Left Talk Radio.
Pat Buchanan: Pro choice, gay rights activist, part-time CNN pundit.
MSNBCs Alan Keyes: They do not come anymore liberal than Alan Keyes.
Larry King: Progressive intellectual feared by conservatives for tough follow-up questions.
Tim Russert: Never one to let Republicans get away with softball questions.
Coulter/Malkin: Not worth commenting on, they belong in a cage together.
Already proven but the myth continues. nm
.
You and Myth make sense
I had forgotten to look at it that way, but on reflecting on it, that does make sense. Heck, I even voted for Jimmy Carter when I was a young wild-child. I, too, have grown a bit more conservative, but I'm somewhere in the middle. It also does make sense about the celebs. Much like back during the red scare when McCarthy had anyone with suspected communist sympathies blacklisted, the pendulum has swung to where anyone with a conservative viewpoint would probably have a hard time finding work.
The myth of al-Zarqawi, Napoleoni believes, helped usher in al-Qaida's transformation from a small elitist vanguard to a mass movement.
The myth of al-Zarqawi, Napoleoni believes, helped usher in al-Qaida's transformation from a small elitist vanguard to a mass movement. (Photo: spacewar.com)
The United States created the myth around Iraq insurgency leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and reality followed, terrorism expert Loretta Napoleoni said.
Al-Zarqawi was born Ahmad Fadil al-Khalayleh in October 1966 in the crime and poverty-ridden Jordanian city of Zarqa. But his myth was born Feb. 5, 2003, when then-Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the United Nations the case for war with Iraq.
Napoleoni, the author of Insurgent Iraq, told reporters last week that Powell's argument falsely exploited Zarqawi to prove a link between then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. She said that through fabrications of Zarqawi's status, influence and connections the myth became the reality - a self-fulfilling prophecy.
He became what we wanted him to be. We put him there, not the jihadists, Napoleoni said.
Iraq's most notorious insurgent, Napoleoni argues, accomplished what bin Laden could not: spread the message of jihad into Iraq.
In an article of Napoleoni's in the current November/December issue of Foreign Policy, she said, In a sense, it is the very things that make Zarqawi seem most ordinary - his humble upbringing, misspent youth and early failures - that make him most frightening. Because, although he may have some gifts as a leader of men, it is also likely that there are many more 'al-Zarqawis' capable of filling his place.
The myth of al-Zarqawi, Napoleoni believes, helped usher in al-Qaida's transformation from a small elitist vanguard to a mass movement.
Al-Zarqawi became the icon of a new generation of anti-imperialist jihadists, she said.
The grand claim that al-Zarqawi provided the vital link between Saddam and al-Qaida lost its significance after it became known that al-Zarqawi and bin Laden did not forge a partnership until after the war's start. The two are believed to have met sometime in 2000, but al-Zarqawi - similar to a group of dissenting al-Qaida members -rebuffed bin Laden's anti-American brand of jihad.
He did not have a global vision like Osama, said Napoleoni, who interviewed primary and secondary sources close to al-Zarqawi and his network.
A former member of al-Zarqawi's camp in Herat told her, I never heard him praise anyone apart from the Prophet [Muhammad]; this was Abu Musab's character. He never followed anyone.
Al-Zarqawi's scope before the Iraq war, she continued, did not extend past corrupt Arab regimes, particularly Jordan's. Between 2000 and early 2002, he operated the training camp in Herat with Taliban funds; the fighters bound for Jordan. After the fall of the Taliban, he fled to Iraqi Kurdistan and set up shop.
In 2001, Kurdish officials enlightened the United States about the uninvited Jordanian, said Napoleoni. Jordanian officials, who had still unsolved terrorist attacks, were eager to implicate al-Zarqawi, she claimed. The little-known militant instantly had fingerprints on most major terrorist attacks after Sept. 11, 2001. He was depicted in Powell's speech as a key player in the al-Qaida network.
By perpetuating a terrifying myth of al-Zarqawi, the author said, The United States, Kurds, and Jordanians all won ... but jihad gained momentum, after in-group dissension and U.S. coalition operations had left the core of al-Qaida crippled.
In her article, Napoleoni says, [Zarqawi] had finally managed to grasp bin Laden's definition of the faraway enemy, the United States. Adding that, Its presence in Iraq as an occupying power made it clear to him that the United States was as important a target as any of the Arab regimes he had grown to hate.
... The myth constructed around him is at the root of his transformation into a political leader. With bin Laden trapped somewhere in Afghanistan and Pakistan, al-Zarqawi fast became the new symbolic leader in the fight against America and a manager for whoever was looking to be part of that struggle, she wrote.
The author points to letters between al-Zarqawi and bin Laden that have surfaced over the past two years, indicating the evolution in their relationship, most notably a shift in al-Zarqawi which led to his seeking additional legitimacy among Sunnis that bin Laden could help bestow.
In late December 2004 - shortly after the fall of Fallujah - the pan-Arab network Al-Jazeera aired a video of what was bin Laden's first public embrace of Zarqawi and his fight in Iraq.
... We in al-Qaida welcome your union with us ... and so that it be known, the brother mujahid Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is the emir of the al Qaida organization [in Iraq], bin Laden declared.
Napoleoni believes that al-Zarqawi, however, is still largely driven by the romantic vision of a restored Caliphate, and that his motives still are less political than some other factions participating in the Iraq resistance.
She questions whether he has actually devised a plan for what he will do, if and when, he wins.
The myth of the Clinton surplus - been disproved -sm
A lot of democrats keep pushing this bogus claim that there was a surplus when in fact there never was. This has been discussed on this board, so by this message I'm assuming you never saw the message or went the the US Treasury website to check it out. Below is a link to it and explains what really happened.
The US National Debt proves there was never a surplus, and the article explains why people claim otherwise for political reasons. - good read. Even my most conservatives friends bought into this surplus craze, and said they were glad their eyes were opened.
I'll credit another poster for origianlly posting this (it's been so long I forget who now).
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